🎯 TSC’s Promotion Blueprint: How Teachers Earn Their Next Grade 🧑🏫
The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has unveiled a detailed, points-based system to make promotions more transparent and merit-based. This comes after public scrutiny over how 25,000 teachers were recently promoted.
Here’s the breakdown of how teachers score points to climb the career ladder:
📊 The Scoring Criteria:
- Acting Roles Matter 🤝: Teachers who have served in acting administrative positions (like Principal or Deputy Headteacher) get extra marks. The longer the acting service, the higher the score, recognizing the responsibility they held.
- Rewarding Experience & Patience ⏳: Teachers who have been stagnated in one job grade for a long time are awarded more points than those recently promoted, acknowledging their dedication and patience.
- Performance is Key 📈: A teacher’s rating on the Teacher Performance Appraisal and Development (TPAD) tool directly impacts their score. Consistently high performers are rewarded accordingly.
- Valuing Seniority 👴👵: Older teachers receive a higher score than their younger colleagues. For example, those aged 55+ score more than those between 50-54, who in turn score more than the 45-49 age group.
- Co-Curricular Champions 🏆: Leading students to victory in sports, drama, or music earns big points. International wins score higher than national, and national higher than county-level achievements.
- Existing Vacancies 📋: Promotions are ultimately dependent on the number of vacant posts available at each level.
🌍 Special Considerations for Equity:
- Gender Balance ⚖️: The TSC prioritizes posting female teachers as heads of girls’ schools to provide role models and ensures gender balance in mixed schools.
- Affirmative Action ♿: A policy is in place to ensure at least 5% of promotions in every cycle go to Teachers with Disabilities (PWDs). In the 2024/2025 financial year, 5.049% of promoted teachers were PWDs.
- Hard-to-Staff Areas 🏜️: Teachers serving in Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASAL) and other challenging regions benefit from progressive promotions as per the 2021-2025 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).
This standardized system aims to remove subjectivity, ensuring promotions are based on a clear, objective measure of a teacher’s experience, performance, and contribution.
